Follow Here To Purchase Notes from Under the Covers: Waking with Arthritis

Author: Cynthia Tyler
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 978 149 615 1445


When advancing, debilitating arthritis robbed author Cynthia Tyler of the ability to function as a professional calligrapher, and the combination of extreme physical pain and deep emotional suffering resulted in her inability to do the creative work she loved and had done for over thirty-five years, she knew she had to continue “creating something” or succumb into deeper depression.  She turned to a familiar creative artistic outlet - poetry.

Tyler’s poetry invites readers to reflect on their lives and dares to ask questions that many think but few verbalize ... universal questions about pain, chronic illness, God, aging, loss.

Does my mind hold proof enough
that I have lived a life: that I was
young and beautiful
and danced ‘til music’s end?

Notes from Under the Covers, (aptly titled because most of the work was written “under the covers” of the author's bed) is a soul-filled diary intermingling prose and poetry that recounts a difficult time in the author’s life while inspiring readers to “do what you can” in the face of suffering, pain and aging and not victimized by the chronic illness, grief, or loss they may be  experiencing.

A poem.
Every day should start
with a poem.
I prove to myself
that I am here
that I am alive
and my brain works
and still I hold a pen
even against the efforts
of the gnarled and swollen
fingers that seek
to cripple me.
I write a poem.
I win.



Leaving the left-hand pages of the book blank, the author encourages readers to sketch, take notes, slow down, breathe, and make time for reflection as life’s challenges are encountered and faced.   As vignettes of prosaic and poetic wisdom intermingle and permeate the tiny treasure of a book,  the reader is invited into a conversation - a conversation where it is safe to ponder the universal “What’s it all about, Alfie” questions. This gentle book is to be savoured, not raced-through.
Presented in a uniquely personal and profound way, Cynthia Tyler epitomizes Khalil Gibran’s belief that “out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.”  Tyler is a strong soul, whose personal reflections about her journey of pain, the quagmire of aging, and the suffering from depression poignantly emerge from the pages.  She is someone who has “known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss” as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote, and still has found her way out of those depths in writing a tender life-affirming book of hope and inspiration for those living with chronic pain, experiencing loss, or is in a process of healing.